i must have a barbarian's tongue...
   i must since...
having made the soufflé...
   i found it... mostly unsatisfying...

it's not hard to imagine why...
that it was a cheesy ham savoury soufflé...
no...
that the last time i made
a soufflé was in Edinburgh
circa 2005 at 2nd year university...
no...
that a fried egg on toast is simpler
to make...
   no...

what came first: the chicken, or the egg?
i can't be bothered to quiz myself
about this question:
the ******* soufflé comes after the egg...
the ******* omelette comes after... the ******* egg...
the chicken, ergo... comes prior to the egg...
no squid ink no dinosaurs...

necessity comes prior to invention...
chicken, egg... scrambled eggs...
oh god how many variations are there
of the egg...
that glorious poultry abortion...
i mean: you can live on eggs... starve without them...

what is a soufflé? i heard the comparison...
it's most akin to the lightest variation
of a sponge (cake)...

- something prior, though...
entitled Paris circa 2004 - 2007
ctrl + p... é...

oh ****... i forgot to keep it...
but there was only minor things of note...
we drank wine,
we ate cheese and baguettes...
it was summer...
we were foreigners pestering
the Eiffel Tower
for shade: if you can believe it:
come sunset... we were in our earliest
20s latest of teens...
we were young and life
was yet to frock us in mundane
brick-ah-bricks of tedium(s)
impossibilities... prior to being caged
animals... prior to: the "figure" of 8...
towing tau (T): along by accounts...
2 is Z... but it's never minded
as a figure since no motion is attached
to it... as it already is:
for culinary escapades...

- nonetheless it's just a ****** dumb soufflé...
one trick in the ol' book...
not the apostrophe to hide the otherwise
surd lettering...
akin to 'ere...
          'night...
                awe... awry... tease a tickle
a tremor... a tremendousness...
what's to be readied?
a 50 grams of flour
for the béchamel sauce...
i'm trying to figure out the year
in medieval France
when the soufflé was "invented" /
chemistry culinary antics
came to fruition...

like the mythological year
(by Plato's standards)
when beer was "invented":

motto... help the Africans less...
in vain hope of...
not being called a ****...
less and less...
under the thumb of the new vaccine...
don't help those that despise you...
it's pretty simple... isn't it?
why help those that will scalp & scold you
with cousin integer "blessings"...

the women will sort out their
pennies from their geisha hands
and i've already matched up concerns
with "concerns" that are greatly staking
elite ***** envy with...
a thick... bulb-esque-bulging
of a volume of "violins"...
***** extending from the face
finding the mythological chin
and doubly mythological jaw...

if i were toothless...
imagine...

    i can wait an extra hour for a quiche
before i even consider making
a soufflé...
even though i served it with some
white toast...
not, not even, close, "enough"...
i might not hunt for my food...
but sure as **** i don't butcher it twice...
steak meat: well done...
are, we, having, steak...
or English roast beef?

                i can wait an hour for a quiche...
humour me... why?
a soufflé has no... "bite"... concerning...
it's too fluffy to be considered
scrambled eggs...
it's... pretentious like...
            Belvedere is... a name for
White House... pretentious...
synonym-ous...

question: does it, would it, could it ever
make a difference
whether or not the beaten egg whites
are folded in... a figure of 8...
or whether turning anti-clockwise...
or whether turning the wooden spoon
clockwise...
made... or makes... all that necessary
sort of detail...
perhaps when detailing the process of
meat from once butchered...
second... served... bloodied guff-trap
"Argentinian"...
my oath for perfecting what's
to be consecrated on the guillotine...
i.e. made... edible...

if i were to eat drowned kitten sushi...
dining lobster "giggle"...
what i might **** i would subsequently eat...
yes...

puffy butter-smeared whabbits:
odes to a lost trill of the R in english...

- i can wait an extra 30 minutes for a quiche...
i have a barbarians' tongue:
i will hardly appreciate a soufflé...
how well or how terrible i can make one
is probably a question for...
no one eating my scrutiny of
vacancy...

a quiche i can wait for...
since there's the short-crust layer readied
for a pie to mind...
the gleeful leeks and bacon...
the inverted take on
milk that's not cream...
butter please...

i must have a barbarian's tongue
when i state. rather plainly...
i'd rather have the rustic
fried egg on toast...
all this...
egg whites beaten...
so the beaten is given the Copernican
"overdue" by being turned upside down
in the whisking "mould"...
alias: bowl... boul is another alias...

for the worth of quiche & soufflé...
it's best that i can make one
in order to make a critique of it...
which?
both quiche... and the soufflé...

in the land of backgammon...
******* prone lamb stink...
of Ottoman Turks...
anything Saudi requires
Israeli justification first...

my first, my first...
my last my last...
my everyday, sunshine
of.. UB... oh... ****... WD-40...
****** in the "convoy"...
well lubricated, though...
like sunshine on oranges
come the... showers...

by peel, my zest... my any & everything...
that citrus... and -esque...
like spine without a head...
yet the head... adorning a cwown...

loiter... angry... for what's to be...
leisured at...
suffocating yoghurt...
gurgle by the troublesome boot...

          i might die the most envious.

Stick with me, friend.
I’d like to make a distinction:
I revere writers but do not deify them.
My heroes and role models must be grounded,
Must have so-called feet of clay.
And there’s always something more in my craw,
Whenever I see scribblers carved in marble,
Glorified to the point of divinity and magic.
Because in my heart of hearts,
Reverence for writers,
Is an odyssey of disillusionment and

I fancy myself a man of letters,
Although “Humanoid of Keystrokes,”
Might be more apt; an appellation,
Digitally au courant.
I am a man on verbal fire,
Perhaps, I am of a Lost Generation myself.
And don’t you dare tell me to sit down, to calm down.
You stand up when you tell a story.
Even Hemingway--even when he was sitting down--knew that.
Let us go then you and I.
Moving our moveable feast to Paris,
To France, European Union, Earth, Milky Way Galaxy.
(Stick with me, Babaloo!)
Why not join Papa at a tiny table at Les Deux Magots,
Savoring the portugaises,
Working off the buzz of a good Pouilly-Fuisse
At 10:30 in the morning.
The writing: going fast and well.

Why not join that pompous windbag ******* artist?
As he tries to convince Ava Gardner,
That writers tienen cajones grandes, tambien—
Have big ***** too—just like Bullfighters,
Living their lives all the way up.
That writing requires a torero’s finesse and fearlessness.
That to be a writer is to be a real man.
A GOD MAN!
Papa is self-important at being Ernest,
(**** me: some lines cannot be resisted.)
Ava’s **** is on fire.
She can just make him out,
Can just picture him through her libidinous haze,
Leaping the corrida wall,
Setting her up for photos ops with Luis Miguel Dominguín,
And Antonio Ordóñez, his brother-in-law rival,
During that most dangerous summer of 1959.
Or, her chance to set up a *******,
With Manolete and El Cordobés,
While a really *******,
Completely defeated & destroyed 2,000-pound bull,
Bleeds out on the arena sand.

Although I revere writers,
I refuse to deify them.
A famous writer must be brought down to earth--
Forcibly if necessary--
Chained to a rock in the Caucasus,
Their liver noshed on by an eagle.
In short: the abject humiliation of mortality.
Punished, ridiculed and laughed at.
Laughing himself silly,
******* on one’s self-indulgent, egocentric universe.
If not, what hope do any of us have?

Writing for Ernie may have been a divine gift,
His daily spiritual communion and routine,
A mere sacramental taking of dictation from God,
But for most of us writing is just ******* self-torture.
The Hemingway Hero:
Whatever happened to him on the Italian-Austrian front in 1918
May have been painful but was hardly heroic.
The ******* was an ambulance driver for Christ’s sake.
Distributing chocolate and cigarettes to Italian soldiers,
In the trenches behind the front lines,
A far cry from actual combat.
Besides, he was only on the job for two weeks,
Before he ****** up somehow,
Driving his meat-wagon over a live artillery shell.
That BB-sized shrapnel in his legs,
Turned out to be his million-dollar wound,
A gift that kept on giving,
Putting him in line for a fortunate series of biographic details, to wit:
Time at an Italian convalescent hospital in Milano,
Staffed by ***** English nurses,
Who liked to give the teenage soldiers slurpy BJs,
Delirious ******* in the middle of the night,
Sent to Paris as a Toronto Star reporter,
******* up to that big **** Gertrude Stein,
Sweet-talking Sylvia Beach,
At Shakespeare & Company bookstore,
Hitting her up for small loans,
Manipulating and conning Scott Fitzgerald—
The Hark the Herald Jazz Age Angel—
Exploiting F. Scott’s contacts at Scribners,
To get The Sun Also Rises published.
Fitzgerald acted as his literary agent and advocate,
Even performing some crucial editing on the manuscript.
Hemingway got payback for this friendship years later,
By telling the world in A Moveable Feast,
That Zelda convinced Scott he had a small ****--
Yeah, all of it stems from those bumps & bruises,
Scrapes & scratches he got near Schio,
Along the Piave River on July 8, 1918.
Slap on an Italian Silver Medal of Valor—
An ostentatious decoration of dubious Napoleonic lineage—
40,000 of which were liberally dispensed during WWI—
And Ernie was on his way.

Was there ever a more arrogant, world-class scumbag;
A more graceless-under-pressure,
Sorry excuse of a machismo show-horse?
Look: I think Hemingway was a great writer,
But he was a gigantic gasbag,
A self-indulgent *****,
And a mean-spirited bully—
That bogus facade he put on as this writer/slash/bullfighter,
Kilimanjaro, great white hunter,
Big game Bwana,
Sport fishing, hard drinking,
Swinging-****, womanizing,
*** I-******-Ava-Gardner bragging rights—all of it—
Just made him a bigger, poorer excuse for a human being,
When the chips were finally down,
When the truth finally caught up with him,
In the early morning hours,
Of July 2, 1961, in Ketchum, Idaho.
I can’t think of a more pathetic writer’s life than
Hemingway’s last few years.
Sixty electric shock treatments,
And the ******* still killed himself.

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Suicide Prevention Hotline Need help?
In the U.S., call:  1-800-273-8255  

At the end of your rope?  Be an ***** Donor!  
      
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Phone:   804-782-4920,  

So why am I still mesmerized by,
The whole Hemingway hero thing?
That stoicism, the grace under pressure,
That real men don’t eat quiche,
A la Norman Mailer crap?
I guess I can relate to both Hemingway the Matador,
And Hemingway the Pompous *******,
Not to mention Mailer who stabbed his second of six wives,
And threw his fourth out of a third-floor window.
One thing’s for sure: I’m living life all the way up,
Thanks to a steady supply of medical cannabis,
And some freaky chocolate chip cookies
From the Area 51--Our Products are Out of this World—Bakery
(“In compliance with CA prop 215 SE 420, Section 11362.5,
And 11362.7 of CA H.S.C. Do not drive,
Or operate heavy equipment,
While under the influence.
Keep out of reach of children,
And comedian Aziz Ansari.”)

So getting back to Hemingway,
I return to Cuba to work on my book.
During the day--usually in the early morning hours--
When “the characters drive me up there,”
I climb to my tower room,
Stand up at my typewriter in the upstairs alcove.
I stand up to tell my story because last night,
Everyone got drunk and threw all the ******* furniture in the pool.
By the way, I’m putting together my Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
I can’t decide between:
“I may be defeated but I’ll never be destroyed,” or
“You can destroy me but you’ll never defeat me.”
The kind of artistic doublespeak they love in Sweden.
Maybe: “Night falls and day breaks, but no one gets hurt.”
God help me.
I need to come up with a bunch of real pithy crap soon.
Maybe I’ll just smoke a joint before the speech and,
Start riffing off the cuff about literary good taste:

“In my novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, for example, I had Maria tell Pilar that the earth moved, but left out the parts about Robert Jordan’s ******* and the tube of Astroglide.”

Stockholm’s only a month away,
So I’m under a lot of pressure.
Where’s Princess Grace under Pressure when I need her?
I used to work for the Kansas City Star,
Working with newspaper people who advocated:
Short sentences.
Short paragraphs.
Active verbs.
Authenticity.
Compression.
Clarity.
Immediacy.
Those were the only rules I ever learned,
For the business of writing,
But my prose tended to be a bit clipped, to wit:
A simple series,
Of simple declarative sentences,
For simpletons.
I’m told my stuff is real popular with Special-Ed kids,
And those ******* that run
The International Imitation Hemingway Competition,
AKA: The Bad Hemingway Contest.
The truth is: I always wanted to get a bit more flowery,
Especially after I found out I got paid by the word.
That’s when the *** and **** proved mighty useful.
        
I live at La Finca Vigia:
My house in San Francisco de Paula,
A Havana suburb.
My other place is in town,
Room #511 at the Hotel Ambos Mundos,
Where on a regular basis I _
(Insert simple declarative Anglo-Saxon expletive)
My guantanmera on a regular basis.
But La Finca’s the real party pad.
Fidel and Che and the rest of the Granma (aka “The Minnow”) crew
Come down from the mountains,
To use my shower and refresh themselves,
On an irregular basis.
At night we drink mojitos, daiquiris or,
The *** & coke some people call Cuba Libre.
We drink the *** and plan strategy,
Make plans for taking out Fulgencio Batista,
And his Mafia cronies,
Using the small arms and hand grenades,
We got from Allen Dulles.

Of course, after the Bay of Pigs debacle,
You had to go, Ernesto.
Kennedy had the CIA stage your suicide,
And that was all she wrote.
And all you wrote.
Never having had a chance,
To tell the 1960s Baby Boomers about class warfare in America.
Poor pathetic Papa Hemingway.
Lenin and Stalin may have ruined Marxism,
But Marx was no dummy.
Not in your book.
Or mine.

I went to the Cordon Bleu
And my name is Pierre
I work in the kitchen
I’m a French chef extraordinaire

With fine French food
My name is synonymous
But I am an addict
I attend McDonalds Anonymous

When I make a quiche
I just want to hug it
But I keep getting cravings
For a Chicken McNugget

Fast food or French food
I am conflicted
Fast food or French food
Yes I am addicted

The 12-step program
Keeps me on track
I have to fight my desire
To binge on Big Mac

I pretend I’m a food snob
My life’s full of lies
When I buy burgers
I must wear a disguise

I should come out of the closet
Admit my transgressions
Then they would accept me
For my fast food obsessions

Maybe the other chefs
Would heap me with praise
If I smothered my Big Macs
With Sauce Hollandaise